DUALITY: The World of Lies (4 page)

“We remain on this approach angle without
deviation, and we do not under any circumstances accelerate. I’ve
locked the nav,” she declared with no small hint of annoyance,
since Aru shouldn’t be questioning her on any of this to begin
with. She could guess at his simplistic reasoning: that they ought
to bolt through this layer at high velocity to reduce their
exposure period. They would certainly need to do that when exiting
the coronal layers at the star’s escape velocity; there was no way
around that, but not now, not on their descent. They would approach
with prudence, minimizing risk. Her captain’s infamous bravado was
not required at this juncture. As Captain, of course, Aru could
override her navlock from the command console, but she gave him a
glare that he knew well, an ominous look that portended a direct
physical intervention should he dare pursue such a course of
action.

“If it means that much that you, Commander.”
He smiled in half sincere acquiescence, then looked in a general
upward direction to address the ship’s network. “Where do you stand
on the matter, System?”

“I recommend, Captain, we initiate a turn to
route us of out of the corona at full thrust.”

The Kinetic’s AI was a state-of-the-art AI8
and fully sentient, but it remained a nagging stickler through all
their various adventures over the years. This being their most
reckless escapade to date had evoked the worst in it. Mei laughed.
“Stick with the mission parameters. That was not the matter he
asked you to address, Kinny, and you damn well know
that.”

“Then, I believe Commander Li’s entry approach
strategy to be the most sage,” System responded.

“Thank you, Kinny,” said Mei. It was odd. This
was a total role-reversal in her relationship with the Captain, who
was usually the rational one and she far, far from it. Today she
was even in uniform, hair to code, sharp and focused… and even
addressing Aru as “Captain” on occasion. She could get back to
flouting protocol with wild abandon once this business was
over.

It made him happy, which was the least she
owed him for agreeing to go along with this perilous escapade. No
other fleet officer could have obtained approval for such a venture
from High Command. But Captian Psyron did not require permission.
Aru, the Calidonian nobleman, had a very special status within the
Fleet. Mei had served under him for years while he defined his own
missions, some in line with the Fleets objectives, and others
counter to them. They had defined their careers and made their mark
already by defeating the rebellion of Carousel 66. It was a full on
war that waged on for years. They battled 66ers and their allied
separatists, but they’d also stood off against the Fleet in
military matters where carouselian civilians were endangered by
their operations, butting heads at times with admiralty. No matter
how things ever played out, Aru was never court marshaled,
censured, or even questioned! He was, it seemed, untouchable. She
often wondered by what unseen hand he was granted such privilege.
They had agreed that the day would come when she would dictate the
mission. It’s what she had joined for, it’s what she’d waited for,
and this mission was everything to her. Just as Aru had his red
secrets, so too had she her blue.

“So be it.” He shook his head and conceded.
“System, keep us updated on the thermals, voltages, and heatsink
capacitance.”

“Aye, Captain.” System dutifully
confirmed.

Concession was not Aru’s strong suit, and it
would come at a price. Mei saw what was coming before his lips even
uttered a syllable. “Now that I finally having you drug-free and
behaving in a manner almost befitting a Fleet officer, let’s go
over the mission data one more time, shall we? “

Aru had never accepted the intelligence this
mission was predicated on, and Mei couldn’t blame him. It was
appallingly cryptic. She had not told him how high the order had
come from, just that it had been bidden by Service Intelligence,
which itself was also something of a lie. The Service, per se,
really knew nothing about this, because this order came from an
even higher source. The informational basis she'd been provided for
this high risk covert endeavor was indeed archaic, but she trusted
it because it had come from her master, and that was enough
credibility for her. And Aru would just have to accept her word for
it. To reveal more to him would only elicit another conspiratorial
rant from him about “The Cult of Indulu.” Pffff! If he only knew...
And no matter how close their relationship (and they were
practically married) they were on opposing sides in the great
dichotomy that defined the Taiji system. If there were a Cearulein
cult ruling Occitania, even she as a prominent inner member
understood it little better than he, and it was surely juxtaposed
by whatever mystical dynamic drove Mnemtech and this errant
Calidonian captain she served.

She attempted to cut the crap from the get-go,
but to little avail. “You’ve agreed to this mission. We’re going to
carry it out with the data we have, and we’re going to
succeed.”

“Oh, I’m all for success. I would
certainly hate to risk a charge of high treason for the sake of
failure. We’re being asked to find the proverbial needle in the
haystack, a star-sized flaming haystack. And what intelligence do
we have to go on to narrow our search parameters?” He raised a
finger to his temple in exaggeration and pretended to recall data
from his mindlink. That was of course not necessary. The entirety
of their mission data consisted of a single graphic, and two short
statements they already knew all-too-well. “
A golden sphere on the ecliptic. Transits minor
sunspot over 20 or so minutes.
”

“We are to find the sphere, investigate its
composition, extract its contents, and return them to Occitania,”
spoke Mei as matter-of-factly as she could muster. “Our directives
couldn’t be more clear and concise. The observation is dated to 64
days ago, or 3.2 Rubelian rotations, at which time an equatorial
sunspot was indeed present. Thus we have all the parameters we need
to conduct a sweep of the chromosphere.”

There was one more little thing: the graphical
component. Aru delayed this phase of the argument and stared at her
sternly. She held his eyes firmly even as her body wriggled in
awkward anticipation, because this was the part there really was no
explaining.

Aru summoned a presentation screen across the
bulwark of the inner cylinder and called up the image of the
documentary portion of their intelligence for the mission: a single
cracked and ragged parchment bearing a clumsily rendered charcoal
sketch.

The hand that drew it had been a shaky one,
and it was all one could do to discern the black blotch at the
center as the aforementioned “equatorial sunspot” and the thick
black line and arrow leading to a blotchy circle that indicated the
mystery object's position.

Still he said nothing, but she knew. In order
for Service Intelligence or any other entity to collect such data,
a probe would have to have been flown into the chromosphere of the
Red Star and the data from it transmitted back to them. This
intelligence simply could not exist otherwise, and hence could not
exist without electronic records and images. And even if one were
observing such data electronically and had been compelled for one
reason or another to surreptitiously hand-copy it…

“A 300 hundred year old handmade parchment!”
he declared at last and then repeated for clarification, “A crudely
drawn sketch on 300 hundred year old handmade
parchment.”

She decided to flip this to her advantage this
time and take the initiative on the silence game, smirking at him
as though she knew something, which she really did not. The silence
game carried on for an uncomfortable minute or so before she found
herself relenting.

“I don’t know the origin of the intelligence,
and I don’t need to. The Service would not have assigned us this
mission unless they were confident of its validity. So the rest…
the rest we chalk up to mystery.”

Not about to let her off that
easily, Aru, the rascal, raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Yes,
chalk. Let’s talk about
chalk
,” he chided. “Whoever drafted
this, the man, or woman… and it had to be one of the two, because
this drawing is about far from the machine world as one can get,
yes?”

She rolled her eyes and gesticulated
theatrically in reaction to his expectation of her to render a
blatantly obvious answer to a rhetorical question. “A seer,
perhaps,” she answered with an honest yet probably no-so-recognized
turn of sincerity. Truly, she had nothing better
herself.

“A Pangean mystic perhaps, holed up away in
his cave of solitude? An oracle deep in meditative trance inhaling
incense? And when the vision comes, of course, all he has on hand
is ancient parchment to scribble his findings upon?”

“Could be,” she agreed curtly with a shoulder
shrug. Though really, as she pictured his words, it seemed to her
the most plausible explanation yet.

Aru shook his head in dismay. “This mission
was assigned to you by Service Intelligence?”

“Indeed, love, it was,” she lied
again.

“So this has nothing to do with the Cult of
Indulu?”

Mei cringed at the words. She’d never revealed
to him her relationship to her master. Cult… hmmph! It was no cult;
it was all real. She approached him seductively and leaned in with
a pout as though she expected a kiss. “As far as I know, moonman,
the only star ruled by any cult is the one we are plunging
into.”

Aru backed away cooly. They had not shared a
bedchamber in over a year, all part of a demented game they were
playing, and she cursed him for perpetuating it. It began by his
casual rejection of her advances one evening. Naturally, being a
female and scorned as such, she had to punish him ten-fold before
forgiving such a slight. So for a month she tantalized him at every
opportunity, but refused him the moment he attempted to become more
intimate. Once that punitive period was over, she assumed he’d
learned his lesson and decided to make it all up to him. She laid
in wait in his chamber to surprise him, unclothed and vulnerable,
warmed and ready amid flower petals and candlelight. She’d made a
full offering of herself and was ready to submit to his every
erotic whim. Yet when he entered the chamber and found her
displayed in this state, he did the unthinkable. He
sighed!

Yes, he had sighed and told her he was tired
of all this and that she should just get back to her own quarters
where she belonged, how he was sleepy and still needed to read
through the intel reports that had come in that day. Fucking intel
reports! She was shocked at first, unable to respond. She was on
the verge of doing something she only did very rarely, cry. But her
fury came forth before the first tear could loose itself into a
trickle.

Li Meiyang was a truly dangerous human being,
lethally dangerous. Even fully expecting it, Aru could not hope to
defeat her hand to hand. In gunnery and techno-weapons he
outmatched her handily, but in up close and personal old-fashioned
analog combat, he hardly stood a chance. Few did. Li Meiyang was a
lifelong student of the martial arts, five schools of it, and she
let loose on him with wild fury, a flurry of unanticipated blinding
strikes and kicks. She pummeled him mercilessly, and why not? This
was not a game any man ever had the right to win!

Being in control of ship command, Aru
dispatched secbots his chamber. Through the onslaught, he landed no
strikes of his own, but managed to bodily push her back into the
entryway where she was subsequently subdued, restrained, and
sedated by roving security bots.

She had made a decent mess of his face too.
He’d spent the better part of a day in the medbay getting
reconstituted, while she had been confined to quarters.

They had managed to talk it out, more or less,
and things eventually returned to normal. In retrospect, she
realized that battering a male lover senseless was no way to
heighten his libido. But he’d had a choice and opted to reject her
complete submission, thus he was treated to a taste of her complete
domination.

On and on it went, escalating over the past
year, til it reached the stage it was at now where neither could
bring themselves to even make an overture. This was not a fun game
to Mei, not fun at all. If he pulled this mission off, however, all
would be forgiven, and she would give him the grand prize of the
fulfilling all his erotic notions, and rewards beyond the limits of
his fantasies.

She wanted to. Sure, she hated him, but who
was she kidding? She loved him.

“Calidon is not a moon!” Aru declared, cueing
yet another of their circular banters that had evolved over their
long years in space together, but this one was a playful gesture,
and she welcomed it.

“Planet
Aq
Thalassa,” she began, “has nearly 3% more mass than its
moon
Calidon.”

“Cal-Thal is classified as a
dual
planetary
system by virtually every authority on the matter, with the
singular exception of little miss Li Meiyang. So before presuming
to school me on the subject, please get all of academia and all
governing bodies, on both sides of the Taiji, their machine
entities, and humanity as a whole up to speed with your
standards.”